As I was leaving the prison with most of my windows blown out, the radio reported another tornado near my kids school. There had literally been hundreds of tornadoes and deaths that day across the U.S.A. I raced to my kids school and got lost on my way there.
Now let me explain that; I has been living in that area for over 10 years. All the landmarks were gone, the houses were gone. I was a mile past the school before I realized where I was. When I arrived my kids came running to me in tears. The roof of their gymnasium had been torn off. When they saw me and the car they all broke down. We hugged in the parking lot. A hug that said everything we were feeling. For them, the relief that their Mom was o.k. but not entirely.
We had to drive many miles before we could find a gas station that still had gas. The one we found had a line over two miles long. They gouged the price while we were waiting by 2$. The ride home was traumatic. Flash flooding and total destruction. When we arrived I was so very grateful that the home I rented was brick and still standing. The power was out over a week. Everything in the refrigerator had to be tossed. We finally drove two hours to a hotel just so we could shower and watch the news.
After a week I was finally called back to work. Upon arrival in my classroom I found that I was very unprepared for the trauma that I found there. The thing is though it wasn’t the trauma that I was expecting. Which would’ve been similar to my own. No, the trauma was from the way the inmates had been treated during that powerless week.
The C.E.R.T. team had been brought in. Which stands for certified emergency response team. If you look up the definition of C.E.R.T on the internet it would leave you to believe that they are an elite group of officers with specialized training. Training for hostage situations, gang fights, cell extractions and things of a very serious nature.
They’re also supposed to be trained to remain calm and de-escalate volatile situations. They come into the facility dressed like S.W.A.T. and sometimes marching in formation with shields. They can appear very intimidating. For whatever reason they were not visible to me during my extraction, and we’re leaving the facility when I came back to work.
According to the inmates however it was one of the most brutal weeks that they had endured. I allowed my classes to vent and get their feelings off their chests. I heard about a cat that the tornado has thrown into the razor wire and how it took four days for it to die. One inmate in particular was in tears talking about it howling all day and night, and how nobody took it out of its misery.
They talked about having peanut butter sandwiches three times a day for a week. They talked about C.E.R.T. coming in and throwing their boxes and mats on the floor. They talked about brutality and beatings. They talked about their hygiene products being destroyed and that the showers didn’t work for days.
The biggest complaint was how they had no communication with the outside world. Many towns were completely destroyed during the tornado outbreak and the inmates had no idea if their families had survived.
It was hard as a person, a woman, a mother, to listen to so much and not want to just hug some of them. It was hard to remain stoic as if their treatment was somehow part and parcel to being in prison. To remain professional and loyal to the facility and it’s protocol was what was required of me. I did all this but when I got home that night I had to call my sponsor and vent as well.
It was a rough week or two but eventually classes got back to a new normal. The phones came back on and the inmates got the answers they were looking for. The families were finally able to get their answers too. And as usual the news reports said nothing and the statement from the prison was vague and not entirely accurate.
Since this incident I have witnessed multiple C.E.R.T. situations that leads me to believe that the training they’re supposed to receive must be quite diminished. I find them to be straight bullies and aggressively abusive In situations that do not call for it. Mostly cell extractions and contraband hunts is what I have witnessed. They appear to treat everyone with complete neglect of dignity in any shape or form. Mind you, Iam 100% rehabilitation minded so my perspective comes from treating people with respect and dignity regardless of their past.
As a person in recovery, who also needed that dignity and respect to become whole again… Well I really can’t be any other way and be an advocate for people to get another chance at life.
As always, thank you for reading my series. I look forward to part 8 and sharing with you what I learned about the vocabulary of denial. STAY TUNED
Thank you for this. I have often raged about the dangers inflicted upon those who CANNOT SEEK SAFETY, CANNOT SEEK SHELTER, and are abused in the midst of these storms. I have endured ALL of this.